A smart physical keyboard is a hardware device that uses LED or ePaper technology to graphically display a character on each key as opposed to a physical keyboard where the characters are painted or physically written onto each key. Keys of a smart physical keyboard are accessed in a similar manner as the keys of a physical keyboard. However, the keyboard layout of a smart physical keyboard, i.e., the character graphically displayed on each key, can be changed or updated by accessing and changing the keyboard input language.
A keyboard input language is software that denotes the specific layout of a keyboard. A keyboard device driver uses the keyboard input language as a way to map from a specific keystroke to a specific character. Keyboard input languages may vary from country to country. The most common keyboard input language is the “QWERTY” layout. Other common keyboard input languages include the “QWERTZ” layout and the “AZERTY” layout. A user may install multiple keyboard input languages on their computing device and manually switch between the keyboard input languages as needed. Having multiple keyboard input language on a single computing device can be useful if a user is interested in typing in a foreign language that features keys that are not present on a standard “QWERTY” layout, or if the user wishes to type using the keyboard layout which the user is more familiar with. However, switching manually between keyboard input languages can be quite tedious, especially if the user desires to frequently move back and forth between the languages.